Publishers’ solution to increase public access to scholarly journals receives broad-based support
February 19, Washington, DC – Support for the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS) reached a milestone with the endorsement of its 100th signatory. CHORUS is offered by the publishing community as a solution to federal agencies, research institutions, and the public to provide access to peer-reviewed articles reporting on research funded by the federal government. Now in its pilot stage, full production on this new, integrated public access system will begin later this year.
Among the 100 publishers and organizations that have officially endorsed CHORUS are the major publishers of scholarly research, including university and not-for-profit presses, scholarly societies, commercial publishers, and service providers. Together, they publish more than one million peer-reviewed scholarly articles covering a wide range of fields including medical and health sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, behavioral sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and beyond. This broad-based engagement among publishers indicates a strong commitment in the industry to increase public access to scholarly works, and support for CHORUS’ collaboration with federal funding agencies.
CHORUS is able to broaden public access at no cost to the user and at no cost to the government because it leverages existing infrastructure in the scholarly communication system, tapping into standardized metadata for seamless article identification and discovery. It also relieves individual researchers from the burden of public access compliance by rolling it into the regular publishing process and making sure that articles reporting on federally funded research are routinely made publicly available.
“Since the launch of our pilot program in the fall of 2013, CHORUS has quickly garnered support of the community,” said Howard Ratner, Executive Director of CHOR, Inc., a nonprofit organization created to offer CHORUS. “The CHORUS project has actually been years in the making; it is a direct result of close collaboration with the federal government and other stakeholders to devise pragmatic solutions to expand access to the research literature. The community’s endorsement can be attributed to the fact that CHORUS takes into account the interests of all the stakeholders. While it is an important milestone to have reached the 100 signatories, this is just the beginning.”
About CHORUS
CHORUS (The Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States) is a not-for-profit public-private partnership to provide public access to the peer-reviewed publications that report on federally funded research. Conceived by publishers as a solution to meet the needs of federal agencies, research institutions, and the public in providing access to peer-reviewed articles reporting on research funded by the federal government, CHORUS is in active development with 100 signatories (and growing). Five goals drive CHORUS’ functionality: identification, discovery, access, preservation, and compliance. CHORUS is an information bridge, supporting agency search portals and enabling users to easily find free, public access journal articles on publisher platforms. Its open technology platform leverages publishers’ existing infrastructure, avoids duplication of effort, minimizes cost to the government, and ensures the continued availability of the research literature. CHORUS is the first service of the not-for-profit CHOR, Inc. organization.
About CHOR, Inc.
CHOR, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2013 by a group of scholarly publishers to meet the public access needs of federal funding agencies. The first service offered by CHOR, Inc. is CHORUS (The Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States), a public-private partnership to provide public access to the peer-reviewed publications that report on federally funded research.
For more information contact:
Howard Ratner
Executive Director, CHOR, Inc.
hratner@chorusaccess.org
+1 917-251-9235
